Do You Struggle With Growing Your Blog? 5 Steps That Will Help

And many of them ask a similar question: “Sue, I am just starting out. I’ve written a bunch of blog posts, but I don’t have any followers or traffic. How do I grow my blog?”

Lucky for them (and you), there are lots of ways to grow your blog. And most of them work even if you’re just getting started. Follow these 5 steps, and before you know it, you will have hundreds and then thousands of page views and subscribers.

Follow these 5 steps, and before you know it, you will have hundreds and then thousands of page views and subscribers.

1. Choose a specific niche

Many beginner bloggers want to write about everything for everyone. The problem with this is that there is nothing to make your blog stand out. Your readers won’t have a reason to come back and keep reading if your blog is all over the place.

Fight the urge to write about everything from your kids’ soccer games to your favorite movies.

Instead, choose a topic that you are an expert in, or that you are very interested in. What do you know a lot about? What do people come and ask you to help them with? What could you learn about for hours and not get bored?

Get specific. For example, I help beginner bloggers make money from their blogs. That is a lot more specific than just having a blog about blogging. So if you want to write a blog about fitness, instead, consider choosing one sport and writing about that.

If you are worried about choosing a niche that is too narrow, don’t be. It is much easier to choose a too-broad niche than one that is too specific. And the more you can nail down your niche, the easier it will be for your audience to find you.

2. Be consistent

When you blog consistently, your audience will know to come back each week to read your new posts. You will start to see consistent traffic from regular readers.

Many beginner bloggers ask me how much they should post, and most of them are actually writing too many blog posts. Yes, you read that right. Most beginner bloggers post too often. They set themselves up for failure by creating an unrealistic posting schedule that they are unable to stick to.

Instead of posting 3 times a week, I recommend that beginner bloggers post every other week. That may not seem like a lot, but I also recommend that they guest post every other week. When you put the guest posts and regular posts together, they are posting every week.

If you are inspired to write a lot of blog posts in the beginning, great. Just don’t publish them all at once. Instead, schedule them out to be published in the future. That way, you will continue to publish consistent content even if you have a dry week.

3. Choose the right social media platforms on which to promote

Once you are writing regular content, it’s time to get out there and promote it.

When it comes to choosing social media platforms to focus on, ask yourself 2 questions:

Where do I like to hang out?

Where does my audience hang out?

Many beginner bloggers make the mistake of trying to be on every social media platform. This will quickly lead to frustration, time-wasting, and burnout.

By focusing only on the platforms where both you and your audience like to hang out, you give yourself the chance to really get to know those platforms, and you make it more likely that your audience will actually see your posts.

If you are a DIY blogger, for example, you probably want to spend more time on Pinterest and Instagram than you will on LinkedIn. If you are a personal finances blogger, you will probably want to be on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Go to the social media platforms you are considering investing your time in. Search for relevant terms to your niche. See what comes up. You should be able to get a clear sense of whether your audience is hanging out there.

If you have an existing audience, don’t be afraid to reach out and survey them. Ask them where they hang out online. They will be happy to tell you.

4. Promote every post many times

Once you know where your audience hangs out, get out there and promote your blog posts. Many bloggers think they will be “bothering people” if they share their posts multiple times. That’s just not reality. Most people are not going to see your post the first time you share it, and they will miss out on reading your content if you don’t share it more than once.

If you are on Twitter, use a service like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule multiple tweets per post. Vary your tweet each time. One time you can use a quote, another, an interesting fact.

If you are on Pinterest, find relevant group boards and post your blog posts to all of them. The more you get your posts out there, the more your audience will become familiar with you and your blog.

5. Make friends in your niche

One of the strategies that has worked the best for me is building relationships with other bloggers. This, more than anything else, is a quick way to skyrocket your blog traffic when you are just starting out.

Create a list of 20 bloggers with whom you want to build relationships, and then strategically comment on their posts, invite them to contribute to round up posts on your blog, and even pitch guest post ideas to them.

If you are a beginner blogger, and no one is reading your blog posts other than your best friend and your mom, you will be so happy once you’ve used these 5 strategies. They are the quickest way I’ve found to grow my blog, and my clients have been thrilled with their results, as well.

What are your best strategies for growing your blog? Share in the comments below.

You've given some amazing tips on growing a blog and I absolutely agree with each and every word of it. However, I'm more excited because I'm writing a similar blog post and now I feel a little more authoritative on whatever I was saying in that post. I'm definitely sharing this on Twitter and Facebook. I'll be linking this article in my next blog post as well.

The toughest one I had to get over was #4. I am proud of what I post, but I didn't want to be 'spammy' about it. I needed to get it into my head that there are different time zones in the weboshpere and posting a different times is a benefit to the readers in other time zones.

Your key is blogger outreach. Start sending emails to bloggers you admire and/or like to read and tell them how much you enjoy their blog (or a specific post). Then ask them to share a great post of yours on your next email to them.

Promoting your posts through email and social media and blog comments are the best.

Love these tips, once again. Very wise advice to select and STICK TO one social media platform 🙂 As you know, my stomping grounds is currently LinkedIn (for B2B) – and people who get the most results really FOCUS there, and not spread themselves thin. Thank you as always, Sue!

Great post ! It was really insightful and very informative. I have been reading you about 4 months but this is my first time commenting. My problem has been not finding a specific niche. I post about making money,social media and do reviews . Do you think that's too many what do you advise? Again thanks for sharing this value-packed post ,its really helpful.

Money, social media and reviews may go together – how you would do it is target a certain type of person (entrepreneurs, small business owners, bloggers, etc.). Pick one targeted group and you can cover more topics!

This advice is extremely practical and helpful. You make it seem so simple, but I can tell that this is just a brief summation of lots of your experience. Although some of it just reinforced what I already knew to be true, such as focusing on a specific niche and posting consistently, your suggestion to promote the post many times (and how to do it) and making friends in my niche were new to me; eye openers if you will!

I greatly appreciate you sharing your wisdom and experience. I look forward to implementing your ideas to see how they will help build my traffic.

We should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of our site – our titles, content, URLs, and image names. We need to think about our keywords as search terms, how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it. It’s important for every webmaster their website should be responsive for every browser and compatible with all devices because people can visit our website from anything maybe it can be mobile, tablet, desktop pc, or laptop so make sure of our website should be responsive with all browsers and compatible with all devices.

People expect some unique stuff that is different from every blog if we will successful in providing unique content or unique product that is different from the others our blog or product will grow up automatically. There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links to our site it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages, we should make it standard to link back to our archives frequently when creating new content. Social media signals are too much important for SEO. We need to engage our audience on social media group or page as well be friendly with them. A CEO blog is just one element of social media distribution an important SEO strategy according to SEO consult. Eventually, thanks for your great support with your wealthy informative post.

Thank you so much for this article. I’ve got so many ideas running through my head now – can’t wait to start putting these tips into practice! It’s really refreshing to read an article that actually provides thorough advice.

wonderful tips on growing a blog. I have follow all of your 5 steps and trust me its really help me to grow my blog and now its getting huge amount of visitors. I never imagine that these simple tricks can help me to grow my blog. I highly recommend newbie bloggers to follow these steps.

The important thing to get started with blogging is to choose the niche. Then do keyword research to find potential keywords.

After that, start to write the article and promote it on social network sites and other places. Do SEO for it is always necessary in order to get it on the top of search engines.Tony Tran recently posted How to Start A Blog – Step by Step Guide

I was one of those people who posted too often. Now I'm in a rut where I just need a break from writing! I posted almost 1000 words everyday for an entire month! What was I thinking?!

I really liked your idea of networking within your niche and finding blogs that you're going to follow all the time. I just started to do that and it's helped my traffic, but it's also made me some awesome new friends. Great tip!

I don't know what went different. I was on a vacation when this occurred and i didn't even touch my laptop those days. However, when i checked Google Analytics, i found that during my vacation some of the keywords were receiving huge traffic in-spite of no change in the keyword position.Jimmy Dev recently posted IP Cam Viewer Pro Apk For Android Free Download V6.2.5

The idea of building friendship on my niche is something I discovered lately. However, I'm beginning to enjoy the dividend. Now I get my blogger friends link back to my post and even recommend me to their clients on jobs they can't happen.

Now, I no longer see people in my niche as competitors but collaborators. Some of them even guest post on my business blog. We are forming strong network in my area for a mega Summit next soon.

Your article is awesome. Your idea of choosing niche, be consistent to post your blog in particular time not in all time with guest and regular post and mainly last one is great to get relationship with other bloggers . Thanks for your wonderful idea.

Thanks, Sue for sharing these really helpful and working techniques here.

To be honest I have rolled in for the first time on this blog.

And I was also following these tips but was not much serious especially for consistency but now I think I should, in fact, I must extract out a schedule for blogging so that I can reach to the Mount Everest for my niche…Mirza Fahad recently posted 25 Amazing Features of Google That You Don’t Know

The idea of building the friendship on my niche is something I discovered lately. However, I’m beginning to enjoy the dividend. Now I get my blogger friends link back to my post and even recommend me to their clients on jobs they can’t happen.

Now, I no longer see people in my niche as competitors but collaborators. Some of them even guest post on my business blog. We are forming the strong network in my area for a mega Summit next soon.Daniyaal Khaleeq recently posted White Hat SEO Case Study: A Guide For Website Ranking

We should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of our site – our titles, content, URLs, and image names. We need to think about our keywords as search terms, how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it. It’s important for every webmaster their website should be responsive for every browser and compatible with all devices because people can visit our website from anything maybe it can be mobile, tablet, desktop pc, or laptop so make sure of our website should be responsive with all browsers and compatible with all devices.

People expect some unique stuff that is different from every blog if we will successful in providing unique content or unique product that is different from the others our blog or product will grow up automatically. There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links to our site it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages, we should make it standard to link back to our archives frequently when creating new content. Social media signals are too much important for SEO. We need to engage our audience on social media group or page as well be friendly with them. A CEO blog is just one element of social media distribution an important SEO strategy according to SEO consult. Eventually, thanks for your great support with your wealthy informative post.

Hi Sue. Great points. I especially agree with your last 2 points. I struggle a little bit with how often to repost, especially on Facebook. I haven't found any consistent answers from any of the so-called experts. Maybe because there isn't really any consistently with how Facebook displays your posts to your followers.Wayne recently posted Which is Better for a Home-Based Business, Big Ticket Items or Small?